We are offering a Short-term Research Assistant position at the SACHI group, University of St Andrews.

The work is for the design and implementation of a digital dexterity measurement device.

The School of Medicine (Silvia Paracchini) in collaboration with the Computer-Human Interaction Group (Miguel Nacenta) is offering a short appointment to help design and implement a measuring device for hand dexterity.

Here are the conditions:

3 to 4 month duration, depending of intensity.

Flexible between 20h to 36h per week. Please note that some non-UK students might not be legally allowed to work more than 20h/week. Your visa indicates the limit.

Starting at the beginning of February at the latest.

Students 2nd to 4th year and graduate students welcome (if you can spare the time)

Students and non students are welcome to apply, but the work needs to take place in St Andrews, UK.

Approx £13/h.

Requirements and Skill.

Candidates need to be able to program, preferably in Java.

(Preferable but not required) experience with Android device programming.

(Preferable but not required) experience with digital modelling, 3D printing or laser cutting.

The work is of a research nature and might result in authorship in subsequent publications in peer-reviewed journals.

To apply send an e-mail to Dr Miguel Nacenta before the end of Jan 22 (mans@st-andrews.ac.uk) indicating:

I’m just starting to advertise a fellow position in St Andrews for a project that is a follow up of our FatFonts work. The description is suitably general (see the description here), but if you think this remotely interests you, please take a look and send me an e-mail if you have questions.

The French Science magazine “La Recherche” gives annual prices to contributions in different areas of scientific knowledge that come (at least in part) from French laboratories. This year they awarded one of those in the category of Information Sciences to the work that Christophe Hurter, John Brosz, Sheelagh Carpendale, Ricky Pusch and myself carried out and was published at UIST: Transmogrifiers.

A few years ago I came up with the idea of FatFonts, a special kind of digits that encode quantity both in the shape of the digit (as in regular numbers) and in the amount of ink or black pixels (the area of the glyph is proportional to the number it represents). I then worked with Uta Hinrichs and Sheelagh Carpendale to develop the idea and publish a paper.

Although a quirky idea, FatFonts seem to have a bunch of usages… for example, they are convenient when you want to provide a table of numbers that is also a graphical representation. This allows the viewer (or the reader) to very quickly capture the overal distribution, but also to go in and read the specific number, which they can then use to compare to other numbers (in the FatFonts table or in their heads).

FatFonts are great in maps, and that is why Uta and I set out to create a poster that would give a picture of one of the most pressing issues of our time: world population. Thanks to SICSA (and our wonderful helpers Carson, Jed, and Michael), we got the time, money and support to develop the idea. The result is a poster that represents the population of the world using FatFonts.

An overview of the FatFonts poster of the world population.

The poster is made using an equal area projection of the world, and it represents data collected by CIESIN and others. Each grid in the main map, which represents an area equivalent to 200 by 200 km has a 2-level digit FatFont digit in it. That way we can know, with a precision of 100,000 people, how many humans live there. Naturally, the precision is as good as the data (and these are projections using 2005 data, the newest available), but it gives you a really good idea of where people really are. In fact, the map is so mesmerising that I have learnt a lot from it by just spending a lot of time looking at it. It is not only the distribution, but also the numbers. Obviously I am biased, but I strongly believe that seeing the numbers gives you a lot more than just representing density with colours, in part because colour scales are very arbitrary.

Since the number of dark pixels of a FatFont digit is proportional to the number that we are representing, we can calculate how many people each black pixel represents. For an A1 poster in the main area of the map at 600 pixels per inch, each pixel represents approximately 1880 people! FatFonts with the orange background are up by an order of magnitude, so there the ink of a pixel represents approx 18,000 people.

The South Eastern Mediterranean population is concentrated in the Nile delta (Egypt) and Palestine and Israel.

We partnered with Axis maps, who make wonderful typographic maps of cities, and we are selling them here. All the profits will be reinvested in research (e.g., helping pay research internships for students). We think that they are a wonderful present and that they are really fun to look at and discuss.

To give you a better feeling of the map, and because we like to try our new stuff, we have taken some Lytro images of the poster that you can explore in this gallery.

A research career is a complex career. It involves many skills and knowledge that are not necessarily related to the specific topic that you choose to investigate.

In my experience, students just before of at the beginning of their PhD research (at the beginning of their research careers) are often quite disconnected from the actual skills and background that will make them successful. This is why I try to supply my students with some of the knowledge that, sooner or later, they will need to apply. To help with this, I have selected four books that all my students get at the beginning of their PhDs (to read in their free time). Here is the selection, and why I selected each book. Note: I’d love you to share other books you think are valuable at this stage (use the comments below).

1. The Craft of Research (Booth, Colomb, Williams)

Science/Engineering students often think that writing is the boring part of the job. Most of them realise that they have to do it, and some might even know that they have to do it well to be successful. However, telling a student that they have to get better at writing is not the best approach. In the best case, they already know that they have to do it, and in the worse, they might start hating it.

Instead, I like to consider writing (of academic papers and reports) as thinking on paper. It is often not until I have written the last bit of a paper (e.g., the discussion section) that I fully understand the research that I have done, the implications, and the value of it. Of course, the research is mostly already in your mind (and in your code, data, etc), but putting it on paper takes you to the next step: you can communicate it to the world and, perhaps most importantly, to yourself.

And this is what this book is about: setting up questions, understanding the problem, structuring a solution, all mediated through writing. A particular favorite of mine is the bit about making arguments; being able to make a claim and support it with evidence in a convincing way is one of those things that students think they know, but only learn after supervision, much experience and, perhaps, reading this book.

Although the grammar advice might be somewhat antiquated and not always completely correct, the rest of the book, in particular the parts about style, helped me significantly improve my writing (although I certainly don’t claim mastery!). I think this book is particularly useful for students who are not native speakers of English and who come from traditions where clarity and brevity is not as central as in the English speaking scientific community (I’m from Spain, and I’m in shock most of the time I have to read or review a thesis in Spanish).

The most important point of the book might be summarised in a quote attributed to Blaise Pascal: If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. Well, a student should have the time, so the text should be shorter while keeping the crucial information. It takes time and effort, but readers (and markers) will be happier, the world will waste less paper, and the paper/dissertation will be more likely to be read and used by others.

3. A PhD is not enough! (Feibelman)

Very often students lack context. They might know that they want to do research, they might even know that they like research. But what else is involved? Why would a PhD be useful? What does it get you? Most importantly, what does it NOT get you?

This book might be a bit harsh to start on (sometimes reality is a bit hard), but it provides a nice glimpse on the world of research and highlights much of what really becomes the focus of what you do as a researcher and academic. The bad news is that there is a lot more of politics, strategy, and marketing in this job than what we all expect when we start. The good news is that you can be prepared for it, and might even get to enjoy some of those bits. In any case, and from my personal opinion, being in research is awesome, but it is better to be ready for what it requires from you.

Note: there are other similar/related books about research and academia that are worth mentioning and reading (e.g., this, this, and this), but perhaps not strictly necessary at the beginning of a PhD).

4. Getting Things Done (Allen)

So, what is really required from a PhD? Effective work and perseverance. Most people in academia know that you don’t have to be a genius to get a PhD. Gosh, you don’t even have to get the best or most novel ideas. But your ability to work hard, avoid procrastination, and persevere will determine the chances of being successful in your PhD and of being able to take your career further.

Although there is a lot of crap in the self-help and productivity literature, this does not mean that it is better to ignore it all. This book describes my favorite system, and although it is not perfect and I still work really really long hours, it has helped me enormously. This might not be the best system for productivity that there is, or be the best system for everyone, but at least is honest, well explained, and feasible. I’m a fan.

The reality of a PhD is that, if students think they are busy during their undergrads or MSc, the demands on time will only keep increasing. This is certainly true after you have become a doctor. If you don’t like GTD, you better find something else!

Have you come across other books that you think are useful? I’d love to compile a list with your suggestions, and I might even add a book or two to my list!

The School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews is offering a number of 7th century scholarships. If you are interested in working with me in any of my topics of interest (mostly within HCI and Information Visualization), send me a line. Here is more information about the offered projects and how to apply: